At Its Worst Ptsd Can Lead To Suicide
One of the horrible side effects of any mental illness is a risk for harmful or suicidal thoughts. It is believed that both deployed and non-deployed veterans have a higher risk for suicide than the general U.S. population.
If you or someone you know needs help, please call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Outside of the U.S., visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of international resources.
What To Say At A Ptsd Exam
If you have severe, disturbing feelings and thoughts around a horrifying incident that persist long after the traumatic event ceased, you may be experiencing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. It affects about 3.5 percent of U.S. adults every year, but its symptoms are treatable with therapy or new, innovative treatments like ketamine infusion therapy.
Talking To Your Loved One About Ptsd Triggers
Ask your loved one about things theyve done in the past to respond to a trigger that seemed to help . Then come up with a joint game plan for how you will respond in future.
Decide with your loved one how you should respond when they have a nightmare, flashback, or panic attack. Having a plan in place will make the situation less scary for both of you. Youll also be in a much better position to help your loved one calm down.
How to help someone having a flashback or panic attack
During a flashback, people often feel a sense of disassociation, as if theyre detached from their own body. Anything you can do to ground them will help.
- Tell your loved one theyre having a flashback and that even though it feels real, the event is not actually happening again.
- Help remind them of their surroundings .
- Encourage them to take deep, slow breaths .
- Avoid sudden movements or anything that might startle them.
- Ask before you touch them. Touching or putting your arms around the person might make them feel trapped, which can lead to greater agitation and even violence.
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How Does Ptsd Affect Relationships
Frustration, anxiety, and avoidance due to post-traumatic stress disorder can make all aspects of life challenging, including your relationships.
You care about those close to you, but PTSD can sometimes make it difficult for you to interact with them. You might say things you dont mean, or feel unable to relax and be intimate.
In response, those around you may withdraw or become unreceptive, creating a cycle in the relationship that can be challenging to break.
But living with PTSD doesnt mean you have to give up on connections with other people.
Its possible to manage symptoms of PTSD to improve your social skills and relationships. In turn, those around you can also learn what living with PTSD means and how to best support your healing process.
Why Healthy Coping Skills Are Important
If you have PTSD, you are at much greater risk of developing a number of other mental health disorders, including anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, and substance use disorders. For example, researchers have found that people with PTSD are about six times as likely as someone without PTSD to develop depression and about five times as likely to develop another anxiety disorder.
People with PTSD are six times as likely as someone without PTSD to attempt suicide. High rates of deliberate self-harm have also been found among people with PTSD.
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Spend Time With People
It is common for people with PTSD to shy away from people, withdraw, and retreat. Fears, anxiety, anger, frustration, confusion, and the feeling of being overwhelmed are just some of the reasons why it might feel better to stay isolated than be around people.
Spending time with supportive friends and family can make a significant difference in your mood and outlook.
Keep in mind that if you are sharing space with any family or friends, it is likely they already notice you struggling. Many times people don’t know how to help or are afraid to say something for fear of causing more emotional pain. It can be helpful for all partiesboth you and your loved onesto have time to spend together. Some ways to spend time with others can include things like:
- Going for a walk
- Talk on the phone
If you don’t feel ready to talk yet, you can also sit quietly in the same room to read a book or a newspaper. Simply sharing the same space quietly can feel comforting.
A More Complex Look At Complex Ptsd
The traumatic stress field has adopted the term Complex Trauma to describe the experience of multiple and/or chronic and prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most often of an interpersonal nature and early-life onset. These exposures often occur within the childs caregiving system and include physical, emotional, and educational neglect and child maltreatment beginning in early childhood.
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Convert Negativity To Positivity
There are two sides constantly battling inside of us one is filled with strength and courage while the other is doubt and insecurities. Which one will you feed?
What if I mess up this speech? What if Im not funny enough? What if I forget what to say?
Its no wonder why many of us are uncomfortable giving a presentation. All we do is bring ourselves down before we got a chance to prove ourselves. This is also known as a self-fulfilling prophecy a belief that comes true because we are acting as if it already is. If you think youre incompetent, then it will eventually become true.
Motivational coaches tout that positive mantras and affirmations tend to boost your confidents for the moments that matter most. Say to yourself: Ill ace this speech and I can do it!
Take advantage of your adrenaline rush to encourage positive outcome rather than thinking of the negative what ifs.
Heres a video of Psychologist Kelly McGonigal who encourages her audience to turn stress into something positive as well as provide methods on how to cope with it:
What Are The Symptoms Of Ptsd
Some of the symptoms are PTSD and complex PTSD are:
- reliving the experience through flashbacks, dreams or nightmares,
- not being able to feel emotions,
- dissociation. This could include disconnecting from yourself or other people,
- negative alternations in mood,
- negative self-perception such as feeling worthless or defeated,
- hyperarousal such as anger, irritability or sleep issues,
- hypervigilance such as feeling on constant alert. Or being overly sensory to stimulus such as smell and noise, and
- avoidance. This could mean that you try to distract your thought from thinking about the trauma. Or you avoid situations that remind you of your trauma.
Is psychosis a symptom of PTSD?
There is a link between PTSD and psychosis. But it is not known if psychosis is a symptom of PTSD. Or a separate mental health condition.
You can find more information about psychosis by clicking here.
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Dealing With Ptsd: What Not To Say To Someone With Ptsd
Things not to say to PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers: This is a list based on my personal experience in dealing with PTSD. I hope it helps you care for your dear one.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a diagnostic label given to those who have been through a traumatic event and have residual emotional distress and anxiety directly related to such event. Its a widespread disorder that can create depression, problems in interpersonal relationships, health issues, and overall difficulty in personal functioning.
Trauma survivors also experience nightmares of the event, flashbacks, and other ways of psychologically reliving the experience. As such, they might be on high alert a lot of the time. Its all too common for someone who has PTSD to feel anger, sadness, grief, guilt, shame, loss of control, and fear. This is a normal reaction to trauma.
Due to these emotions, one might try to hide their struggles, so when they do open up about their experiences, its imperative to provide a supportive response. When another person validates our thoughts, feelings, and experiences, it gives a powerful positive shift on the psychological level.
How we respond to someone who opens up about their experience can either create space for healing, or it can do more damage. Based on my experience with clients, Im suggesting a few things here not to say to someone living with PTSD.
How To Help Someone With Post
Post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes occurs when a traumatic event is experienced. The illness is marked by uncontrollable thoughts, extreme anxiety, nightmares and flashbacks. PTSD sometimes causes short-term memory loss and can have long-term chronic psychological repercussions. Its imperative to seek treatment for PTSD as early as possible. Symptoms can become more severe over time, and for some people, PTSD can last for many years.
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Common Internal Ptsd Triggers
- Physical discomfort, such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, sickness, and sexual frustration.
- Any bodily sensation that recalls the trauma, including pain, old wounds and scars, or a similar injury.
- Strong emotions, especially feeling helpless, out of control, or trapped.
- Feelings toward family members, including mixed feelings of love, vulnerability, and resentment.
You Have Ptsd You Must Be A Veteran
PTSD is relatively common among veterans. About 12% of Gulf War vets and 15% of Vietnam vets have PTSD, compared to about 8% of the general population, according to the National Center for PTSD.
As the stats show, not everyone who serves has the disorder. Dont assume that someone has PTSD just because they fought in a war. This assumption is actually creating more stigma, Blair says. Keep in mind that veterans can come home with physical scars and other psychological consequences, not just PTSD, she says.
But not everyone with PTSD has experienced military conflict. The National Center for PTSD estimates that around 30% of all rape victims develop PTSD at some point in their lives. People can also develop PTSD after mass shootings, natural disasters, armed robbery or mugging, road accidents, terrorism, a diagnosis of a potentially fatal condition, the unexpected death of a loved one.
Grover finds assumptions that she is a veteran easier to deal with than many other remarks. Its just ignorance, she says, on the part of people who dont realize PTSD occurs among survivors of many kinds of traumatic experiences.
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Isnt That Something Only War Veterans Get
The short answer is no. The longer answer will probably involve me telling you to stop commenting on something you dont know much about.
People get PTSD for a range of reasons. Neglect, abuse and trauma from being in combat. Just because shell-shocked soldiers are the most common association with PTSD, that doesnt mean its the only one.
Please read up on PTSD thenstill dont comment on something youre not qualified to comment on.
Do I Really Have Ptsd
Every person handles trauma differently than someone else. Signs appear anytime from a month to years following an event. Symptoms differ by person:
- You could be re-experiencing trauma through feelings, flashbacks, nightmares, distressing frequent images, physical sensations like trembling, pain, or illness.
- Numbing your emotions and avoiding them prohibits reminders of a person, event, or place. You occupy yourself with a job or hobbies. When you withdraw from feelings, youre susceptible to loneliness and isolation.
- You may feel edgy all the time, experiencing periods of irritability, lack of focus, angry outbursts directed outward or inward, and eating or sleeping issues.
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Look After Your Own Mental Health
It’s important to remember that your mental health matters too. Our pages on supporting someone else to seek help, how to cope when supporting someone else, managing stress and maintaining your wellbeing all have lots of information and tips on how to look after yourself.
Support options for you
A traumatic event can have a major impact not just on those who lived through it, but also on that person’s close family, friends and colleagues.
If you experience symptoms of PTSD yourself while supporting someone through a trauma , it might help to try some of the tips on our self-care for PTSD page.
It’s also a good idea to talk to your GP about how you’re feeling, and ask if they can offer you any treatment or support.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – the organisation that produces guidelines on best practice in healthcare – says professionals should consider the impact of traumatic events on relatives and think about how to provide appropriate care.
How To Help Someone With Ptsd
Contributed by Christine Binney
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a mental health problem that can occur after a traumatic event. It can be hard for people to know how to help someone with PTSD because it is impossible to relate to their experience. If you have a friend or family member who is suffering from PTSD, you know how difficult it is to see your loved ones behavior change. Its important to remember that the person suffering from PTSD doesnt always have control over their behavior, so you should not take their actions personally. While it is a hard journey for all involved, there are ways that you can help get life back to the way it was before the trauma. Here is a short guide on how to help someone with PTSD.
Understand the inner workings of PTSD
Understanding PTSD is the first step towards helping someone recover. PTSD is caused by harrowing ordeals such as a physical assault, sexual violence, a natural disaster, war, an accident or the death of a loved one. When a person is threatened with or suffers serious physical harm or violence, they will experience intense fear, helplessness and terror.
Learn the symptoms
Listen
Offer social support
Create a sense of safety
Anticipate triggers
Have a plan in place
Remain calm during emotional outbursts
Encourage professional treatment
Take care of yourself
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Safety And Emotional Health
In the best of circumstances, you both are emotionally mature, you realize that one person is sick, but getting better, you’re not in physical danger from the PTSD sufferer and you both are committed to getting through a long and difficult time and getting out the other side with professional help.
In most circumstances, however, both of you are in different emotional places on a long process of healing — and hurt — and with very different issues that you have to deal with. Depending on your situation and the symptoms of the PTSD sufferer, you have to protect yourself, first, on two levels: Physical and Emotional.
I can say that one of my own symptoms is irrational anger and even rage. That said, I’ve never struck or threatened to strike my loved one even in the worse cases of flooding or irrational anger. I have, however, been startled awake by an ignorant homeless shelter staff member that shook people awake every morning, even those of us in ‘clinic beds.’ She ignored protocol and I had her on the ground in a wrestling lock with my hand around her throat before I was even awake. It was only the intervention of another staff member that kept me from being kicked out of the shelter and/or arrested.
If you think you’re safe because you’re a big guy and the PTSD sufferer is a woman, think again.
Stop Dwelling On Ancient History
That is top advice. Because it happened a long time ago, I should just be over it, right?
People who were abused at a young age, when they werent able to process what was happening, should just stop dwelling on it as their minds develop and they get flashbacks?
If it was as easy as going Well it happened X number of years ago so Im over it now, Im pretty sure wed all have snapped our fingers and made our problems disappear.
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Be Honest About Your Needs
Take time to help your loved ones understand what you are experiencing and be honest about how they can help. Ask them to be patient with you and remember to be patient with yourself as well. Setting and maintaining healthy boundaries around time or personal space can be important in relationships. Learning how to trust people and asking for help can be significant obstacles, but are very importantespecially with those who care for us most.
Consider Attending A Therapy Session With Us To Better Understand What Were Going Through
I think its extremely important to go with your loved one to a therapy session so the mental health professional can walk you through your loved ones PTSD. My now-husband was with me during one of my worst flashbacks. Despite me having explained thoroughly my PTSD symptoms to him, along with what tends to trigger me, he argued with me rather than recognizing I was having a flashback. His resistance made the flashback and the anxiety that followed significantly worse and my symptoms lasted more than a week afterward.
Thankfully, he listened to me when my therapist suggested he come with me to my next session. The therapist was able to articulate what I couldnt in a way my husband could understand. It was really helpful for both of us and since then my husband has been supportive, loving and understanding whenever Ive felt symptoms. Pitman
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